Each new day is an opportunity to start a fresh chapter in your life’s story. You have a blank page to fill with your own words, sentences to live by, and characters who support your journey. Write a story that you love and are proud of, one that your children and grandchildren will cherish and want to read over and over. Ensure your story is authentic and original, reflecting your life, dreams, and desires—not a copy of someone else’s life or a story written for you by others. Here’s how to write the best story of your life.

Start by building the right characters. Your characters bring your story to life and are essential to your journey. Choose the right characters—the ones who will stay with you until the end, support you when your story is falling apart, fill your pages and chapters, and help you write a happy ending.

Find the purpose of your story. What message are you trying to share with the world? What is your purpose? What story do you want others to read about you? Discover a meaning in your story that makes you come alive and inspires you to wake up every day. Find a purpose that keeps your story interesting and keeps you engaged, something worth fighting for, living for, and even dying for.

Don’t let defeat put an end to your story. Every great story includes moments of despair, failure, and defeat, but these are what make it truly compelling and meaningful. These moments represent the climax and turning point of your story. This is when transformation begins, both for you and your narrative. It becomes about how you handle defeat, how you rise after falling, and how you change your life’s direction after failure. A victorious ending requires a series of lost battles.

Love is the essence of your story. Your story will be very weak without the power of love. You have to write a story of love and passion. Love is what keeps the story moving forward. It could be a lover, a friend, your work, your parents, your children, God or the love of the journey, the love of the unknown, or even your struggle to find love and define it. No matter how you tackle it, love is the crux of your story.

Don’t worry so much about the ending. Pay closer attention to the details of your story and how it unfolds. The best writers often don’t know how their story will end; they just begin writing, and the ending reveals itself as the main plot takes shape. If you focus too much on the ending, you might miss out on the entire journey.

Give it a spectacular title. The title is what summarizes your story in a few words. It’s what makes people want to read your story. It’s your choice how you want people to perceive your story. Each day you make a choice as to whether the title ends with a question mark, a period, or an exclamation point.

This beautiful piece draws inspiration from Rania Naim.